Remote Work Foundations

According to Mike Gutman, Director of Marketing at FlexJobs, studies have shown that remote workers have the potential to be more productive and make more money than their in-office counterparts. This course gives you the tools you need to be a productive and valuable member of the team, even working remotely.

There’s more freedom to where you conduct your day as a remote worker. If you have meetings—take them from home where it is quiet. Whenever you’re done with meetings, move away from home for a change of pace. 

Co-working spaces and coffee shops provide you with ambient noise and other people who are working to motivate you to work better. If you’re working exclusively at home, make sure you have a quiet, private room where you can close the door to if you need to avoid distractions.

If you’re onboarding as a remote employee, ask your boss how you’ll be onboarded, figure out what you need to do for any meetings and find the best ways to communicate questions, comments or ideas as they come up. Set expectations immediately with your boss regarding communication, availability and overall working habits in the remote setting. Frequently check in with your boss following this—it prevents you and them from getting out of sync.

Your colleagues are valuable resources and team members—if you’re working remotely, it’s up to you to reach out and get to know people. Build rapport further by asking or offering to help your colleagues in any way you can. Resolve and prevent conflict with your coworkers by watching your tone during email or chats. If you perceive a conflict, ask if you can chat via phone to clarify a few things and ask questions to get to the heart of misunderstandings.

Set clearly defined goals for your productivity when you work remotely. Figure out who all the stakeholders for your job are, have a call with those stakeholders and your team and be clear about which communication styles everyone prefers for which kind of information. From day-to-day, make your to-do list transparent with your team. Then, reach out and make sure what you’re doing is in line with the goals and expectations of everyone else on the team.

Meetings won’t look the same for you when you work remotely, but that can be an advantage. For any kind of meeting, think about what goal you’re trying to achieve and what kind of meeting would be best to accomplish it. 

Remember that not all meetings have to be meetings—if it’s just an update, email your team members or use a Google Doc to update one another. This can reduce the number of meetings you have and improve everyone’s productivity.

If you become a proactive communicator by working transparently and being able to work independently, you can create a new successful style of work that allows you to work where and how you work best. 

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